Port Marsa El Brega lies on the shores of Libya’s Gulf of
Sirte. About 200 kilometers southwest of the Port of Benghazi, Port Marsa El
Brega is at the most southerly point of the Mediterranean Sea. In 2003, about
12 thousand people lived in Port Marsa El Brega.

Port Marsa El Brega’s reason to exist is the oil refinery
there, owned and run by a subsidiary of the state-owned National Oil
Corporation, Sirte Oil Company. Run in partnership with Esso Oil during the
1960s and 1970s, the Sirte Oil Company has had control of the Port Marsa El
Brega facilities since the early 1980s.

Port History

Before World War II, the site of Port Marsa El Brega was
simply a small fishing village. During the war, the village was completely
destroyed. After the war, the area was a field for land mines until it was
selected to be the terminal for the country’s first oil pipeline running 169
kilometers from Zaltan to the south.

The new town and Port Marsa El Brega were constructed in the
early 1960s from prefabricated materials. The new Port Marsa El Brega consisted
of breakwaters, a wharf, undersea pipelines, and floating berths for oil
tankers. The town contained a power plant, paved streets, housing, and a
generous planting of trees to hold back the desert.

Oil was first shipped from Port Marsa El Brega in 1961,
leading to the creation of a refinery and a natural gas liquefication plant. In
1977, a plant for processing ammonia opened.

Today, Port Marsa El Brega is becoming Libya’s most
important petrochemical center. It contains a technical training school, and it
is connected to the Ports of Tripoli
and Benghazi
and Cairo, Egypt, by coastal highway.